GECOM NEEDS TIME TO PREPARE PROPERLY FOR ELECTIONS … in 2014 it was 180 days

Feb 24, 2019 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

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In recent days, there has been a rash of pronouncements, threats and demands by the opposition PPP for General and Regional elections by the third week of March, 90 days after the passage of the infamous no confidence vote in the National Assembly.
The Opposition leaders have been travelling through this Country spouting nonsense, misleading the people into believing that the elections could be organized in a hurry. But the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), the only institution that is constitutionally allowed to conduct any national elections, has made it clear that it would be almost impossible to do so in the time demanded by the PPP.
GECOM has said that it needs a minimum of 148 days to do everything that needs to be done to ready itself and Guyana for credible, free and fair elections, according to the Constitution. It would require millions of state dollars to ensure that the list of electors/voters is current and could be approved by every party involved. This, of course, involves house-to-house registration which will be constitutionally due the day after April 30 this year.
Nothing else will clean the voters list now. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of young residents turned 18 years old since May 2015. Not to put too fine a point on it, the youths will not be pleased if they do not find their names on the voters’ list. They will be first-time voters, and this is a big deal.
Perhaps it was the best thing that the GECOM Commissioners voted 4 to 3 in favour of house-to-house registration: 1) to get the Millennials on the list, and 2) to cleanse it of dead citizens and Guyanese who have migrated.
If GECOM does not ensure that our young people, or any citizen for that matter, are listed, the Government will be sued, and the elections declared invalid. That would turn into a huge waste of people’s time and a waste of billions of dollars; a loss of focus for the Government; and an unforgivable delay of progress – infrastructural, educational, community development-wise, and other economic improvements throughout the country. This sorry situation has already started to slow down the fast pace we had set to make Guyana ready for the investors and the new businesses that are already beginning to change Guyana’s business landscape.
GECOM needs money, which was not budgeted for 2019, to purchase and print ballot sheets, train polling day staff, purchase the correct ink, purchase/repair communication equipment to allow the staff posted to the regions to stay in contact with head office, the police force and other essential service providers.
GECOM needs time to train Polling Day staff, familiarize them with the voting procedures which do not allow for even the smallest mistake. They have to plan for Nomination Day and do what is necessary with the various lists of Candidates.
GECOM asked for 148 days to prepare for elections in 2019, but in 2014, GECOM had set a timetable of 180 days for preparation for Local Government Elections which did not even materialize under the PPP. A GECOM official said at the time:
“This work plan puts the timeframe for the conduct of the elections at 180 days commencing from the announcement of a date. The draft plan is being reviewed constantly since it contains several major statutory and administrative tasks … Demarcation of boundaries, acquisition of non-sensitive election materials, advertising, training, hiring of election day workers, public education, claims and objections, etc. are necessary in the preparations for elections.”
He stated that due to the “dynamic expansion of housing”, boundaries have to be revisited to ensure that everyone is guaranteed the right to vote. He also talked about voter education, public education, and repeated publication of Election notices and lists.
GECOM Commissioner Vincent Alexander has consistently stated that the current list of electors is bloated. He is sure that it is numerically impossible for the list of eligible voters today to have 500,000 names or more. The country’s population is an estimated 780,000 people at last census. The national schools’ population under the age of 18 is more than 250,000. Factor in permanent migration at 7.2 percent per year and you’ll find that the number of voting-age adults is less than 500,000. Therefore the list has to be fixed!
Now, after GECOM’s democratic decision last week, after all the PPP’s shouting and threatening, they have changed track and are now accusing the Commission of receiving instructions from this Government. Remember that when the PPP was in office, they continuously denied this same accusation, even tossing aside the very credible international allegations of political control over the elections machinery.
So it is no surprise that with the tables turned, the PPP expects this government to do exactly the same things they used to do. The leader even accused some GECOM Commissioners of having partisan political reasons for their vote for house-to-house-registration. However, things don’t work that way anymore. Guyana has to be concerned about how the international community sees us which, for all that this country is now worth, compels us to walk the straight and narrow.

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